agreed on those parts BUT i would qualify that the new poverty is a lack of power over PEOPLE (single children with no cousins that live in a 2 1/2 in the suburbs) and slight power over material things (i.e. they have food).
By contrast, the old poverty is slight power over people (due to large families/ghetto communities) and a lack of power over actual things (i.e. no food).

mcirth: it just seems like youre reaching with the sterility thing. I don't see why those factors would lead to that in particular. I think the only way that could happen is if people a whole become less social. The less social they are the more cut off and isolated from real human experiences they will be. But I don't see how "the new poverty" will make people less social.

When you are a developing nation, and in order to remain competative economically (or at least emulate success), you have to shower your citizens with Prozac, Ritalin, Adderol, and other behavoir modification drugs...

i went to eastern europe, i went out of my way to get out of the city cores. Poverty is EXACTLY how i described it in eastern europe. LOCALS cant even go to the core anymore except to work, only foreigners with money can go since its so damn expensive for locals.
Its also like that in Western europe too, look like places like North of Paris, where the car torching broke out. (where i've stayed also) This place is a perfect example of the new poverty. Didn't see any starving people in either eastern europe or in parisian condo suburbs.

I'd argue its also happening in the US , think of places like Harlem. Isn't it being gentrified/has been for the last 15 years? Where do you think the poor that were there go when rich urbanites move into their homes? They can't afford the city anymore, they move those white-walled condos in the suburbs. I don't think it will/is happening on the west coast as much because stuff was built more spaced out to begin with, but i'm not sure since i haven't been to cali in forever. Basically the east coast city ghetto is disapearing in many areas & is being replaced by the white-walled sterile condo variety ghetto that looks something, to be frank, like a hospital ward. (hence sterile)

here is a nice views of the way out of Bratislava city center to the white-walled sterile suburbs:

but your right, not every area of the world has been converted to the new poverty yet.

sodium: I don't live in a white-walled sterile suburban condo, but more suggestions please!

Click to expand...

I can tell you that such is happening in the west, but we don't have a gang of those high rise buildings out here. Reason being: there was some rule or whatever that buildings couldn't be over a certain height. That's why when you see a tv show of L.A. you see only two areas with anything resembling a tall building: Century City/westside and Downtown. The former is nearest to UCLA and Sunset and Santa Monica, etc., the latter is near USC (Go Trojans). But these areas flooded with latinos and blacks starting basically in the fifies with blacks running from prejudice in the south and mexicans just...runnin. Not to mention the asians who flooded into the west by boat.

So where did all the white people and jews go? There is a spot not too far from Century City that's all jewish. You damn near have to be practicing hacidic jews to live there, they do NOT play. Mad respect for them and how the families interconnect - I'm sorry, but blacks lack that so much, and it seems like whites don't need it.

But everyone else in L.A. are either minorities or college students who have no intentions of staying in these apt.s or these houses.

Within 5 feet of Downtown L.A. you can be approached with someone loving to offer you a chance at 6 of 7 deadly sins; the fryer lady outside the club (Gluttony) Pros (Lust) a rock dealer's BMW (envy twice. One for the car nut, and two for the addict) Vanity (no, really. Vanity from Action jackson) a bum beggin' for change (sloth) gangsters and wangsters who rep they city but do nothing to ameliorate it (pride)...

So blacks, latinos and asians were good and comfy with their mediocrity, but the whites who worked in century city and downtown in those high rise offices need something closer, so now you see crazy shit. Starbucks in S. Central with a thug clientele. "Ay Homie! aY, CRIP! GIT ME ONE UH THEM CARAMEL MACHIATO!"
Really nice things happen to the municipal areas. More police presence (who don't actually do anything. They are there to serve the community, not the people in them.) Brown dirt turns into new grass. Old fountain gets new make over. The next move is almost irresistable: Yo piece of shit house in Inglewood that you thought only you could love suddenly doubles and triples as the new 24hr Fitness shows up, the shopping mall around the corner, a circuit city and a Best Buy competing for interest, and located very close to the 105, the 10 AND the 405; not to mention LA CIENEGA and LA BREA. That gives multiple routes to areas where rich white people go for work. (Law offices, PR firms, Corporate centers). But they gave those key areas to the blacks and latinos to turn into hoods.

So now, they're about to come back to those prime locations at exorbitant prices to drive us out to -- you guessed it -- the suburbs.

So the same happens in cali. Just not HERE. Whites live where they have ALWAYS lived, and blacks live in the same places their slave ancestors were left.

ghet: the question of power over self is a different issue then power relations. Not sure if the poor today have less power over self then in the past. I would have to give it more thought.

Sodium: Maybe you think sterile is too pejorative since you attribute the new poverty as an 'improvement'. I respect that, though my contention is neither that the new poverty is good or bad, merely that it is. I use "sterile", a pejorative term, more to balance that fact that most people - as a first instinct - see the new poverty as something positive. So the correction using a pejorative term, rather than say using say a positive term like "orderly" or "managed", is meant to encourage thought about what is.

Nislanif: as a sociologist, do you think changes in basically the structure of the ghetto has had an effect on hiphop in the last 20 years?